rose petals strewn on the grass
by V.M. Bell
Summary: She does not flinch as her arm is branded with ice, and she merely kisses the hem of his robes before receding into a column of cloaked figures. A Ginny genfic.


**rose petals strewn on the grass, blown in by the gale**

This is not a happy story. If it were, we would begin with _once upon a time_.

_Once upon a time, there was a girl thought of as no more than The Baby. She was their only girl, their youngest, their precious innocent little flower._

Then we would transition to her tortured past.

_She was enchanted – no, possessed! – by a force of great evil, which threatened to destroy her mind and her free will. But she was also enchanted by another, much different force: one of Light instead of Dark, and she wanted that force to keep her captive because she loved it so desperately._

Perhaps from there, matters could diverge in a number of ways, but let us assume that she would find it in herself to move on.

_There came a point, though, where she realized her desire was preventing her from the being the person she truly was. Summoning up all the willpower within her, she shoved that desire out of her thoughts and was, for the first time in her life, completely uninhibited._

The past always finds a way to haunt us. She would be no exception.

_However, she could not forget her desire. It continued to smolder, even as she found herself involved with other people, and slowly, gradually, the one she loved began to notice her. She felt that all of her dreams were coming true._

From here, we see that the only possible resolution is a happy ending for what sort of heartless person would ever want to ruin the story at its moment of greatest elation?

_Awkwardly at first, they moved closer together: a smile, a touch, a kiss. It was only a matter of time before they found each other emotionally as well. They were inseparable, living happily ever after._

But as we stated earlier, this is not a happy story. Because it is not one, then, the story we have just told is null, void, and useless.

Let us start over again.

It was magic, every time she shed her robes before him and shivered beneath his touch. Their bodies never failed to move in seamless interplay as they rolled and writhed atop the bed. Others might find it a platitude that had long since been exhausted, but Ginny Weasley never lied when she said Harry completed her in a way no one else did, only because she had never been completed before in her life.

"You said we should stop doing this," she whispered, now sitting, dressed, on the bed.

His eyes flashed with impatience. "We should, but you're not helping, are you, by sneaking up to my bed at midnight?"

Ginny opened her mouth to tell Harry to quiet down when she remembered the convenient Silencing Charm he had performed. "Well, you're not doing anything to stop me!"

"You know, you _are_ right. I haven't, but I will. Ginny, no more of these nighttime visits, please. It's putting you in great danger, and speaking as a friend, I can't let anything happen to you." He kissed her lightly on the lips. "Get going now, and goodnight."

She leaned in for a brief hug and then bounced off the mattress, slipping past the other sleeping figures in the room. Harry remained on the bed, a sort of dazed smile pasted on his face.

In that moment of perfect bliss, how was he to know that would be the last he would see of her?

The next morning, Harry awoke with to hushed whispers and creaking bed frames. "Wassamatter?" he asked quietly, putting on his glasses.

"Someone's been taken," Neville whispered.

Harry nodded. Something wasn't right. He should feel mortally offended that yet another students had been abducted from the once-safe confines of Hogwarts, but so many had disappeared. When he looked at the ever-growing list of the missing, there was only ever a dull throbbing _been-there-done-that_ in him. "Do they know who it is?"

He looked from Seamus's ashen face to Dean's rapidly moving eyes to…

"Oh, Ron, it's not…?"

But his best friend's head was buried in a Chudley Cannons pillow, and Harry's insides clenched with a most terrible finality.

In darkness (oh, always the darkness, always the darkness) he creeps up upon her, his voice thick in her ear.

_I have come to reclaim my soul._

She barely stirs in her sleep, and he says again, _I have come to reclaim my soul._

Then he enters her, almost gently at first, and she exhales a happy sigh. Something inside her stirs (wake up, wake up, wake up, oh Ginny, wake up), stirring, stirring, stirring, and it waits for her with a wide grin and slit eyes.

She sits upright with a gasp, looking around the bed. There is nothing there but the velvet bed hangings and the soft rhythmic breathing of her dorm mates. Go back to sleep, she tells herself.

_Ginny, I have missed you._

She turns and turns and turns, pulling the pillow over her head. There is nothing, there is nothing, there is nothing.

_You have changed, haven't you? No longer so lonely, so pitiable…but you were never pitiable, I don't think. There was always that fire, and I daresay I saw it first. You know that I saw it first. I believed in you, Ginny, long before anyone else so much as realized you existed. I believe in you still._

Dear Tom, I think I am losing my mind!

_Yet as you deny me, you and I both know very well that you need me, that we are too close, too close to be pulled apart._

Ginny screams but her mouth is silent; a marquee of blurred images flashes through her blinded vision but she sees nothing. They impress harder, harder on her until she has lost all sensation but for his words, insistent in her beating heart. _Come with me, Ginny, and we shall live again._

The windows in the dormitory fly open, and between their beckoning glass panes, she drifts away.

Their masked faces leer above her. A muffled silence pervades through the cavernous hall, cut by her slow footsteps on the tiles, the quickened breathing only she can hear. They insisted on beautifying her because the Dark Lord requested it, so her hair hangs damp and heavy against her blood-red robes, ribbons of pearls threaded through her thick strands. Her lips are dry with scarlet paint.

You are beautiful, they told her.

He stands there upon the alter. She cannot see him for her head is bowed, but she feels him tingle in her veins as she draws closer, ever closer.

"Look up, Ginny," he whispers.

She obeys. She keeps her eyes glassy.

His voice is like warm velvet. Warm sweet velvet. "May I present to you our newest sister, Ginny Weasley." The name _Weasley_ ruffles through the ranks of the Death Eaters as they stir beneath their cloaks. _The Weasleys…they're the family of blood traitors, aren't they? Is that their daughter? Is she a spy?_ The Dark Lord continues speaking, a touch of impatience on his words. "Tonight, she shall be inducted under the Mark. Ginny, dear, won't you kneel for me?"

The marble is hard against her knees. "Yes, Tom."

"Your forearm, please. No, the other one."

Her pure alabaster skin shines under the emerald of the Dark Mark looming above them.

She does not flinch as her arm is branded with ice, and she merely kisses the hem of his robes before receding into a column of cloaked figures.

She walks among the springtime blossoms, their beautiful heads bowed before her steps. Behind her, the gray mountains fade into the chill and she breathes in the wind, letting it seep through her body until she cannot open her eyes and does not know where she is. But when she can open her eyes, she is still there, standing in the valley of springtime blossoms.

"Ginny! Ginny!" Mingled voices in the air. She does not stir. "Ginny!"

There are two men, two men that grope in the mountain air for breath, for her, calling, and finally, she turns her head to look at them. Her face remains veiled.

They stop. She can see the green in one of the men's eyes. She can see the familiar mop of red hair on the other. Almost instinctively, she reaches for the sleeve of her robe and pulls it up beyond her elbow. She takes out her wand, points it at them, and closes her eyes.

It is cold out.

"I'm not Ginny."

One light push in the right spot – the stultifying silence will shatter.

"_Avada Kedavra_."


End file.
